Speech by MOS Alvin Tan at P&G Singapore Innovation Centre 10th Anniversary Celebration

Mr Victor Aguilar, Chief Research, Development and Innovation Officer, P&G

Mr Standa Vecera, President of P&G Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa

Introduction

1 Thank you for having me to commemorate the 10th Anniversary of P&G's Singapore Innovation Centre (SGIC). This milestone signifies a decade of remarkable progress and innovation. Congrats!

2 P&G needs no introduction. Without your range of products,

·      Our clothes will be dirty,

·      Our hair will be smelly,

·      Our teeth may fall out,

·      Our homes will stink,

·      Our babies’ poop will overwhelm us,

·      We won’t look as good as we do

3 So thank you for providing the world with

·      Fabric care,

·      Hair care,

·      Oral care,

·      Baby care,

·      Skin care.

4 But let’s also reflect on the other types of care: people care, product care and partner care.

5 People care. You care about growing your people in Singapore. P&G started in Singapore 35 years ago with a sales team of <100 people. You have now grown to >2,000 employees from >40 nationalities in Singapore, with SgIC having ~500 scientists and engineers.

6 Product care. You also care about your products. You design, innovate and manufacture products for Asia Pacific and beyond. Today, Singapore stands proudly as P&G's Asia Pacific HQ and Global HQ for Skin Care businesses like SK-II.

Your BabyCare Innovation Lab, housed within SgIC, develops innovative baby care products for the Pampers brand, which aims to serve > 60% of the world’s babies.

7 Partner care. You also care about partnerships. As we celebrate SgIC’s 10th Anniversary, I am happy to announce the renewal of the P&G-A*STAR Master Research Collaboration Agreement (MRCA). MRCA was first introduced during SGIC’s opening in 2014. It covers partnerships with public research institutions, Institutes of Higher Learning and public hospitals. Several successful innovations have emerged from this collaboration.

For example, SgIC developed an AI-powered BeautyHub tool to help clinical researchers gain better insights into consumers’ daily skincare needs. This tool uses a proprietary machine-learning facial analysis algorithm developed in partnership with the National Skin Centre and NTU.

8 MRCA’s second phase is a 5-year partnership that will build on the first phase and develop new outcomes by creating and commercialising IP. P&G and the government will jointly inject $20M to fund more collaborative research projects with partners such as A*STAR, our universities and healthcare groups.

9 Like you, my government also cares deeply about people, product and partnership. And like you, we are backing it with funds and action.

We recently announced a $3B top up to our Research, Innovation and Enterprise 2025 at Budget 2024, bringing the total to $28B over 5 years. Some of these funds will support public-private partnerships, and we hope this will encourage companies to locate their R&D activities in Singapore and use Singapore as an innovation launchpad.

These will help companies expand, and create good jobs for our people. According to the 2021 National RIE Survey, the number of private sector Research Scientist and Engineers has risen from approximately 18,000 in 2014 to about 21,000 in 2021.

Conclusion

10 So thank you, P&G, for caring about this partnership with Singapore. We hope to see many more achievements from the SgIC so that:

·      Our clothes will smell better,

·      Our hair will be luscious,

·      Our teeth will sparkle

·      Our homes will smell good,

·      And we will all look better than we do today.

11 Congratulations again to P&G!